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Gale's brown bangs fell in front of her eyes, as she rolled over in bed. With them still closed it was the warmth of the sun starting to beam through the window, rather than the light that roused her immediately awake.

"Sorry again!" Gale threw the toast in her mouth, making her hands free for a tackle box and a fishing pool she scooped up on her way out the door.

Gale galloped down the side of the tree that made her home, and across the grass. There was still some dew in the shadier areas, but it was still much later than she had intended getting out. Across pathways, and courts, under a bench and across some gravel she bounded through a bush, to be greeted with something much more solid than she expected.

"What's the big idea? Can't you see someone is trying to fish here?" Dale said righting himself and quickly getting his daughter in a head lock.

"Sorry I'm late," Gale said squirming.

"It's okay, I think you get it from your father," Dale ruffled her hair.

"Probably, I hear he's a bad influence."

"Wouldn't surprise me."

Gale slipped from her dad's grasp and gave him a big hug, before beginning the arduous task of putting back in place the contents of her tackle box, after their unexpected flight.

"You get something to eat?"

"Toast."

Dale slapped his legs as drums and began singing, "I don't like to brag I don't like to boast.."

"Dad, you don't want to scare the fish away."

"As if you hadn't already?"

"Scare them away 'again' then."

"Fine fine," he settled himself back into the shore, and set at the task of untangling his line.

"Sorry dad."

"It's okay, I know you just wanted to get a leg up on me anyway to the first fish."

"You haven't caught anything?"

"Not yet, been pretty slow, no bites, no fish."

"Glad I could spice it up a bit then."

"That you did," Dale squinted hard at the filament, trying to see which way to untangle a particularly nasty knot.

"Again sorry I'm late, I thought I'd set my alarm but..."

"It's okay, besides who knows your mom made the clock right?"

"Yeah."

"So you might have set it, but it might not have worked anyway. Plus it's not a big deal, it's not a deal at all."

"Okay," she casted her line with gusto and watched it drop into the lake with a plop.

"Nice cast."

"Thanks, I think the signatures from my fellow classmates really make it stand out."

Dale chuckled, he'd taught her well. It was always hard with her mother sometimes to get her to realize that not everything was life or death. Granted in their business many times things were life or death, but if you kept that view of things all the time it wore you down till even normal functioning became difficult. It'd always been one of his biggest worries with Gale, with as smart as she was, and determined as she was, that she'd fall into much of the same traps Gadget did, but so often he found himself thankful for having much of his humor rub off on his daughter. It'd serve her well he knew, even as a teen he could already see the makings of that.

"Speaking of classmates, how was the dance last night?" Dale finally got the tangles out of his line and it back in the water.

"It was fine."

"Fine?"

"Fine."

"That boring eh?"

"More just, I don't know," Gale reeled her line back in for another cast. "It's more that I don't see the point."

"Which point?"

"So we all go to a dance, we're supposed to bring dates, get to know each other and all of this is some arcane remnant of what effectively is a long range mating ritual?"

"I think you're over thinking it."

"Yeah but still, if I wanted to dance with friends, or hang out in a loud room full of sweaty teens I can do that without some multiannual event."

"But would you?"

"No because it doesn't interest me."

"Did you find anyone that interested you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Gale it's not all about some event, it's also just about seeing what you like about others or don't. It's an excuse to get folks out and about, sometimes paired up, and get them some experience being that way."

"Did you enjoy them when you were younger?"

"Yeah but in a different way than you. I think you're more like your mom in that way."

"She detest them too?"

"Don't think she ever went to them," Dale laughed. "She didn't get out of the plane much before Chip and I came along."

Gale swung her pole in little circles trying to get the gears in her head to turn as well, "What did you notice about mom?"

"Everything."

"It's not the simple I know it," Gale bonked her dad on the head with the end of her rod.

"Hey I was using that!"

"Not well enough if that's all you could answer."

"You got me," Dale sighed. "I think it wasn't an all at first thing it developed over time, but I noticed how smart and wise she was, how no matter what happened she was always determined even if it took a couple tries to get back on her feet and move forward. I noticed that she was able to cope with anything, maybe not in the best ways but still in a way that kept her accomplishing something."

"I could see that."

"But most of all I noticed how much she cared about others, and wanted to help others, especially those close to her. I can't list how many times she got every single one of the Rangers out of a jam, and kept pushing us to help others, and make the world better."

"So did Monty, and Chip, and Tammy and Zipper and..."

"They're different."

"Not in the description you just made," Gale nudged her father.

"Well yeah but still it's different."

"You're obfuscating"

"Now you're going to be like mom and confuse me vocabulary wise too?"

"Now you're deferring."

"I was going to choose deflecting."

Gale growled and started tickling him. "You're being completely unhelpful!"

He took a long deep breath, "It's not easy to describe, it's more a feeling, that you belong with them. And that there's just sort of a connection that is hard to explain."

"What was it you looked for?"

"That's not really the right question I don't think."

Gale raised her left eyebrow up past her bangs.

"It's like this. If you've got a big jigsaw puzzle and there's a thousand pieces in front of you, and let's say you've got the outlines of the sky done. So now you're searching through the pieces over and over again looking for this one piece that's blue and a certain shape. You try piece after piece but they don't fit, or the color is a bit off, or you find it fits better somewhere else. That's what dating is, you know somewhat what you're looking for, you try a bunch of different combos either by seeing if it fits, or you can tell offhand it doesn't, and at some point it just clicks into place."

"But how do you know when it clicks?"

"That's the hard part, because sometimes you have to turn the piece around, see if it fits a little different way, or you have to actually try to click it in and for a while it seems like it's the right one but then you realize it isn't."

"Golly, sounds like a pain."

"It is," Dale reeled his lure back in and pulled some grass off it before throwing it back out into the lake. "But it's worth it."

"You say that now."

"And I might not have said it before, you're right. But it's kinda like fishing, sometimes the catching is good, sometimes it's slow, sometimes there will be times where you won't get a single bite."

"No linear progress."

"Nope stops and starts. Took me a long time to find Gadget, and even longer to figure out how our two pieces fit together in a relationship."

"Think I'll find my Gadget?"

"I have no doubt. But it might take a while to find someone as smart, amazing, perfect, loving, caring, and kind as you."

"Thanks dad," Gale leaned up against him as he draped his arm around her, as a smile draped across both of their faces.